


Cuisine Euphonique

by thecountessolivia



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: ASMR, Autonomous sensory meridian response, But don't expect the killer to be some big mystery, Hannibal has a YouTube cooking channel, Kind of a Case Fic, M/M, Masturbation, Murderrrrr, Phone Sex, Slow burn towards first meeting, Will Has Nightmares
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-24
Updated: 2020-02-01
Packaged: 2020-02-03 18:46:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 13,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18585058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecountessolivia/pseuds/thecountessolivia
Summary: Nightmares brought on by a gruesome case lead Will to some unorthodox therapy in the form of a YouTube cooking channel.





	1. The Scream Catcher

**Author's Note:**

> I myself do not experience ASMR. Before writing this story, I interviewed several people that do and I hope I learned enough to keep things respectful. I know ASMR gets misconstrued as a sexual kink by some — so I tried to make the eventual smut in this story more about Will and Hannibal. 
> 
> Inspired by [this brilliant video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mm_Zstcgt_w).

  
The knife cut a crescent. The smooth expanse of flesh beaded bloody in its wake. When the blade pulled back the skin, the exposed muscle, raw and wet, still twitched underneath. Then came the screams.

"Will?"

Will shuddered and blinked. The trainee next to him had cut and peeled the clingfilm from her microwavable lunch. It came off so neatly.

He passed a hand over his face and turned to find the voice that had recalled him back to reality: Alana.

"Yeah, hi. I'm here."

Alana gave him that smile of hers, the one so kind that Will could never help but see in it a trace of pity. "I'm glad you are," she said. "You okay?"

Will looked down at his sandwich. He had meant to sit down at the break room table and eat it like a normal person not consumed by daytime nightmares. He'd failed.

"Yeah. Just— the Stripper case—"

She wrinkled her nose slightly. "Did they really have to call him that?"

"He does strip his victims, in a manner of speaking. Their skin matters to him about as much as their clothes. Just another layer for him to peel back. He’s trying and see who they really are.” Will tore into his sandwich packet and took a bite. “He does it in the woods, so that no one can hear them scream. The screams are what he really wants. They're more valuable to him than flesh. Personally, I thought they should have called him the Scream Catcher.”

Silence. The trainee, who’d been staring at Will while he rattled all that out, looked uncomfortable for a moment then quickly vacated the room. Will glanced after her, then at Alana, who was settling him a familiar look: worried, mostly kind, again faintly pitying. She didn't know what to say. No one ever did.

At least she didn't leave. She sat down to unpack her own lunch, a gentle nudge for him to do the same. He slumped into a chair next to hers and tried to look away from anything that could transmute into a flayed human corpse.

“It’s a harrowing case,” she said. “How are you sleeping?”

"Not great. Not much." The past few nights, he'd been hearing their screams, the ceiling plaster above his bed peeling back and hanging down in raw strips like their skin.

"Tried anything?"

"All the usual stuff."

"You know—"

"Don't say therapy, Alana. I don't do therapy."

They were quiet again, just the two of them. Will tried to focus on the rhythmic crunch of Alana's cucumber slices, the sweet song of the dripping sink tap. It soothed him. He felt Alana watching him as they ate.

"Back when I was a stressed out student," she began, "insomnia nearly drove me nuts. I thought I'd flunk my finals. Then I found this CD." She laughed and shook her head. "It was the most obscure thing. A recording of Jung's Zürich lectures. The narrator had this soothing, whispery voice."

Will smiled faintly into his tuna sandwich. "Did it make your skin tingle?"

She nodded. "I didn't know anyone else who reacted that way to certain stimuli. It wasn't called ASMR back then, and I couldn't find much literature about it. But that recording really relaxed me. I used to listen to it before bed."

Will chewed slowly. "I get it too," he said after a moment. "The tingling."

"I still listen to a YouTube video once in a while if I can’t get to sleep." She put a hand on his shoulder. "Try it, Will. Might be worth a shot."

\---

Will went home that night acutely aware of the soundtrack of his life: the satisfying snap of the clip on his briefcase, the rain on his windshield, the creak of his porch steps. For what it was worth, Alana's suggestion had at least afforded a distraction from murder.

The snick of scissors, the rapping and tapping of rain on metal gutters, the soft scrape of a hairbrush — they had always made Will's skin ripple with a curious sort of pleasure. He tried not to pay the sensation any mind. He didn't need to add to the clutter of oddities already hanging off his personality.

At home, he moved mechanically through his evening routine: feed dogs, feed self, let dogs out, grade papers, shower. When he'd run out of rituals that helped loneliness seem like solitude, he settled into bed.

Laptop in lap, headphones to hand. His fingers hovered over the keyboard. He scowled at the screen. But then it was either this, or another broken night, with flayed flesh hanging off Will's ceiling, walls full of blood.

The first search brought back a kaleidoscopic bounty of video thumbnails most of which Will was terrified to click on: Asian teenagers with alarming quantities of food, suspiciously attractive women with scissors or long nails next to oversized microphones. Was this what lulled Alana to sleep? Will kept scrolling. And scrolling.

Six pages in, he stopped.

He stared at the thumbnail. It looked mislaid among the shouting neon of the other videos. A channel calling itself "Compendium Ferculorum" had uploaded the video six days prior and had titled it "Calf's liver in Normandy sauce, simply prepared". The channel had no other posts.

Inside that little rectangle Will saw a pristine kitchen counter, arranged like the canvas of Flemish still life with ingredients for the dish. Behind the arrangement was a glimpse of a white apron, spotlessly white. A doorway to another world — and wasn't that just what Will needed?

Will put his headphones on, clicked and set the video to full screen.

The faintest backdrop of classical music, something orderly and Baroque, admitted him into that world. A pair of hands, manicured and masculine, moved into the shot and guided kitchen scissors around the periphery of smooth organ meat. The soft, rhythmic snip of the blades sent a frisson wave soaring up Will's spine. He sunk deeper into his pillow, pulled up the duvet and gave himself over to the pleasant shiver.

The muted strings and harpsichord continued. The meat was sliced, set on a silver platter and set aside. A vegetable peeler came next. It stripped the skin off an apple in a single coiling swathe, and Will felt, for a moment, faintly ill — the fruit looked flayed. But the little ripples of delight carried him through the unease.

He turned up the volume on his laptop. 

The crisp crumple of onion skin. The clack of the knife as it diced. The sizzle of butter and flesh in a cast iron pan. The sharp hiss of a Calvados-fed flame, the babbling bubbling of the cream. Microscopic hairs danced with delight inside Will's ears. His muscles felt looser under the covers, eyelids heavier. And all the while, not a word from the invisible owner of the hands. So calm and competent, those hands. Will couldn't take his eyes off of them. With each new tremor of pleasure, Will sank further into the sensation that the hands had lifted the lid off his skull and were caressing inside, feather light.

The dish was plated, garnished with roses of dried apple slices dusted in cinnamon. Will could almost smell the brandy, the fatty sweetness of reduced cream. But the subtle symphony was over. The video ended. Reality had Will by the scruff and was dragging him back out far too soon.

He adjusted himself under the covers, pulled the laptop onto his chest, and put the video on a loop.

\---

He woke up to daylight, curled up and snug in a bundle of dry sheets, headphones in an awkward tangle around his head. Time had slipped by — he'd slept.

No screams, no flayed flesh. Had he dreamt of that kitchen, those hands? The laptop was still in bed with him. He opened it quickly and saw the exquisite dish in the final still of the video.

No dream then.

He got up, let the dogs out and stood on the porch undressed in the sharp morning air. He felt absurdly lucid and refreshed.

A strange sort of gratitude crept over him while he started his breakfast. Echoes of the culinary symphony lingered in his brain. He found some pancake mix. He wanted to recreate something of last night's experience for himself, but found it lacking. His hands were no match for the hands in the video. 

He needed to say something to the faceless chef. Sat on the edge of the bed, he stared at the comment box under the video and chewed his lip raw. He went through several drafts before he committed to something that sounded if not elegant then at least sincere.

_"Don't take this the wrong way, but listening to you cook helped me sleep. Thank you."_

Submitted. He stared at the comment, debated deleting it. In the end, he slammed the laptop shut and tried his best to forget about it.

A few hours later, just before his first lecture, his phone trilled inside his bag. Will pulled out: a notification from YouTube.

Will opened it with less than steady hands.

 _"You are most welcome"_ , it read. _"Any other soporific dishes you would like me to prepare for you? I'm all ears."_


	2. Strange Music

Evening came again. Familiar sounds scattered themselves through the silence of Will's house: floorboard creaks, the patter of dog feet, the whistle of the wind outside. None of them touched his skin. None soothed his mind. He did his chores, drifting through the ordinary noises of his life like a ghost ship.

He got into bed, opened his laptop and found the browser tab with the paused video. The reply to his comment sat just below, still scrolled into view. The channel owner's profile picture, a still life of bones and flora in colors both dark and lurid, looked out at Will from the screen, a tiny window he wanted to crawl through.

"Stupid," he muttered. He shoved the laptop aside, turned off the lights and stared into the dark, listening to the thin soundscape of his life.

He waded into shallow sleep. Nightmares splashed about in his head until the trill of his cellphone on the nightstand jerked him awake. He groped for it and stuck it to his ear. He stared through the window at the pale light of dawn while he waited for Jack Crawford to deliver whatever new dish of horror he had called Will to serve.

"Will. I need you to come in.”

Will dragged a palm over his face. "The Stripper?"

"We think he posted something. A recording. Looks like you might have been right."

"About?"

"About the screams."

Will felt the quick and sickly surge of adrenaline. He peeled back the sheets and set his feet on the cold floor.

"Sure it's him?"

"Pretty certain. He listed the GPS coordinates for each of the crime scenes." There was a pause on the other end. Will waited while his stomach churned. "He streamed it, Will," Jack said. "On YouTube."

\---

They were made to wear headphones. Anyone walking past Jack's office would be spared from what was about to spill out into the world.

For six long minutes, they listened.

"The original stream has been taken down," Jack said, after it was over. "Social media are trying their best to stop others from uploading copies.”

"He made music," Beverly said quietly. "From their screams."

There was no other way to describe what they’d just heard. No one had spoken while Jack played the clip: a black screen set to a pulsating melody arranged from agonising cries.

“That’s why we couldn’t find his victim type. No common age, gender or profession.“ Will took a gulp of his coffee, too fast. It burned on its way down. “What he wanted from them was their— specific vocal range. Their tone and pitch."

"Guess you were right,” Beverly said. “We should have called him the Scream Catcher.”

Jack shot her a glare, then turned to Will. “You heard those beats throughout?”

Will stared at the black screen of Jack’s laptop. The victims’ screams had been set to a galloping rhythm of frantic thuds.

"Their hearts.”

Jack nodded. “He must have strapped them to heart rate monitors while he flayed them." He scrubbed back through the track and pressed play again. "Then there's this.”

Will put the headphones back on reluctantly. Howls and pleas crawled out of them and over his body. If his skin could have feel nausea, it would have. Woven into the pauses in the grim orchestration was something like the sound of wind in tall trees, like the rustle of crisp leaves beneath footsteps.

“Sounds from where he killed them," Will whispered. "The music of the forest.”

"Seems likely. He listed the exact locations of the murders under the post. The lab's looking into it." Jack leaned across his desk. "Will. Now that he’s made this, is he done?”

Will was still staring at the black screen of the killer's video, the void that had spawned horror. “Depends,” he said.

“On what?”

“On whether his first composition has had its intended effect."

"What effect is that?”

Will thought back to the sweet pleasures of strange music made by the competent hands of the nameless chef. He shook his head. "I don't know yet."

"You need to give me something to go on."

"The locations," Will said. "If he picked the victims for their ... auditory potential, then the same will be true for the places where he kills them. My guess is he’s out scouting for another auditory canvas."

"You’re telling me my best lead is to go out and listen to the forest?”

Will downed the rest of his coffee. The air in the room seemed thick with the memory of what they'd just heard, a choking feeling he wanted to escape.

“Take it or leave it. Right now I don't have anything else for you.”

\---

Afterwards, Will hid in a bathroom stall. The killer's song, that pure distillation of pain and fear, had followed him out of Jack's office and was fusing itself to the insides of his skull. He wanted to open up his head and drag out every last note. He put his hands over his ears — as if that would help.

The man they ID'ed as James Ellender, the second victim, had wept in big, wet fearful sobs. The young Jane Doe had pleaded over and over for her mother. The memory of their cries made Will's own skin feel as if it were being torn back from his muscles.

He took out his phone with shaking hands and opened the YouTube app. He found the comment from Compendium Ferculorum. He started to type.

_"Make any dish you want. As long as it drowns everything out."_

He hit send and stuck his phone back in his pocket. He didn't want to think about the nonsense he'd just written. How could the mysterious chef understand what Will meant, what he needed so much right now?

His phone buzzed almost at once and Will’s heart thudded in his chest. He looked: a text from Jack. He was being summoned back to the office.

He stared at the message for a moment then, without thinking, opened YouTube again. He found the comment he’d just posted and wrote quickly underneath.

_"Make something tonight. Please."_

\---

He needed to drink, and so he drank. Three glasses of rye saw him through his evening routine, but they didn't see him through the howling echoes in his head. Every beat of silence he couldn't fill with the dribble of dog food poured into metal bowls, or the slam of a kitchen cupboard, filled itself instead with the Catcher's song.

Twice he checked for new notifications on his phone. When he came up empty both times, he left it on the nightstand and promised himself he wouldn't look again.

He wandered into the kitchen and poured himself his fourth glass.

From the dim corner by his bed, he heard a ping and saw the screen light up like a firefly. He walked across the room a little too fast, a little unsteady.

There it was: the promised video. The lush thumbnail image almost glistened above its title, "Ossobuco alla Milanese, saffron risotto".

Only the second video ever posted to the channel, and it had been created just for him. The knowledge made Will warmer than the alcohol had.

He couldn't just play it — he wanted to sink into it. He dimmed the lights, pulled back the covers and slipped into bed, glass in hand, headphones on, laptop perched on his belly.

No background music this time. Only that immaculate kitchen again and those hands, tending to the veal shanks bubbling gently in their thick red stew. The scrape and rap of the wooden spoon against the cast iron pot sent the first rush of sparkling pleasure over Will's skin.

Then a cutaway to the clack of a gleaming blade against the chopping board as it divided vegetables into perfect cubes. Then the shimmering chime of tiny fat grains of rice as they tumbled into another iron pot to be toasted and deluged with the dribble of hot stock. Those articulate hands prying apart strands of saffron to immerse them in the creamy ooze of the stewing risotto. All of it was a symphony designed to make the smallest parts that made up Will's body dance with delight. 

It was everything he had asked for. His skin and brain fizzed with the aftershocks of it, his whole world soft and fuzzy with alcohol and the effects of that mellifluous dish. And still he wanted more.

 _"Thank you for that_ ,” he typed as soon as it was over.

The reply came almost instantly.

_“You are welcome. Does it serve its immersive purpose?"_

Will looked up at the stranger's hands in the paused video, resting so calmly on either side of the plated dish. He listened to the mechanical clack of his keyboard as he wrote his reply.

_“It helps. But when it stops, I'm back to square one."_

_“Back to unwelcome silence?"_

Will felt a strange chill creep down his spine. The song of screams felt far away for the moment, but not far enough. It was coming back for him, fast. _"Something else will eat up the silence soon. Something that can't be helped."_

_“An unwelcome cacophony, then.”_

It's so much worse than that, Will thought. _"You could call it that."_

_"What shall we try for a remedy?"_

Will stared at the screen, fingers hovering over the keyboard. He couldn't bring himself to answer. Compendium Ferculorum was typing a reply, and Will held his breath.

_"Shall we try my voice?"_

Will inhaled too quickly and nearly pushed his laptop away. He could almost hear it, the voice that went with those hands, that food.

_“You mean when you make another video?”_

_“Your predicament seems more urgent than that.”_

This time, Will forgot to breathe. He reached for the keyboard, then hesitated. Another reply was coming. Will waited.

_“Get a room you two LOLLL”_

Will blinked at the comment, posted by user ASMRfan63236.

“For fuck’s—” he muttered and downed the rest of his drink. It rushed into his belly, scorching the last of his restraint in its wake. He clicked into the channel's profile and found the link to a private message.

He wasn't quite drunk enough to give out his phone number to a stranger from the Internet. He typed in his Skype ID instead and sent it before he could change his mind.

He closed the browser tab. Idiotic. He'd regret the whole exchange in the morning, maybe sooner. He shut his laptop and debated obliterating the strange thrill and embarrassment of it all with more booze.

He decided against it and was shuffling to the bathroom to brush his teeth, when his phone began to chime.

Will tried to slow down his breathing and, by proxy, his heart. He walked back to the bed and stared down at his phone and the unknown user Skype ID illuminating its screen.

Heart still racing, he answered.

"Hello?"

"Good evening. Shall we start with introductions?"

The only voice that could have belonged to those hands. Soft and low, calculated, with a hint of brass. Like a mellowed spirit, both sharp and tender.

Will swallowed down the taste of stale rye and slid a hand over his face. He slumped to the edge of the bed and felt, despite himself, the first pull of a smile.

"Yeah, sure. I'm Will."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hanni's risotto was inspired by this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrsY2FUkSYs
> 
> Question for readers: what was Will's YouTube handle or profile pic that so piqued Hanni's interest?


	3. Prelude

"Now then." The chef's voice flowed smoothly out of the phone’s speaker and into Will's head. "Before we continue, it would be wise of me to understand the nature of your predicament."

"Wait. I thought— aren't introductions usually exchanged?" Will said. He was holding the phone too tightly, fidgeting on the edge of the bed, still unsure if he hadn't gotten himself into something stupid. "Aren't you gonna tell me your name?"

"Would a name be of much consequence? The advantage of familiarity is already yours,” the voice replied. “I only know your Christian name. You on the other hand know what my kitchen looks like and that I have a passion for the culinary arts. You even know what I had for dinner."

Will slid sideways onto the mattress, as if toppled by some gentle force. He still thought about hanging up and telling himself he'd never asked for any of this — but the words filled him with a warm and covetous feeling, the same he'd had when the as-yet-nameless chef offered to make a new dish on his behest. He was loathe to let it go.

He pulled on the covers and dragged his laptop over: on its the screen, the exquisite arrangement of slow-simmered flesh sat on display, garnished with tiny wreaths of thyme and a lace trim of curly parsley. Will thought of the spaghetti he’d had for his own dinner.

"You cooked that— for yourself?" he asked.

"I ate it myself, but I made it because you'd asked me to,” the chef said. “So it would be more accurate to say that I cooked it for you."

Will felt even warmer. He wanted to hear more and, at the same time, wanted to change the subject. When he spoke again, he hoped his voice didn't betray his apprehension. Or his smile.

"You didn't have to."

"I wanted to."

“It looked good. The osso bucco, I mean. Really good.”

“It tasted just as good. I'm sure you would have enjoyed it. The shanks were sourced from an exceptionally spoiled pig.”

Will curled under the duvet and pressed his phone between his cheek and pillow. That way, the smooth rumble of the stranger's words could vibrate right against his ear. He could almost picture the mouth that produced each syllable, the soft S's colliding against full flesh. Between the alcohol and the shivery sensation produced by the purr-murmur pouring into his ear, he was starting to drift. He closed his eyes. The next words all but tumbled out of him.

"There's something else I know about you,” he said.

The voice on the other end was even, unsurprised. "Yes?"

“I Googled the name of your channel. It's an old Polish cookbook, right?” Will hesitated, but there was no harm in prying a little more. "You're Polish?"

“It is, and I am not. But I do happen to own a copy of the Compendium’s first edition."

"But that's not where you get your recipes from."

"No. It is full of impractical extravagances such as broth made with pearls and gold. I have merely borrowed the title to showcase a few well-executed classics and the pleasant soundscape they create while they're being prepared."

Will's eyes opened at that, and he stared ahead at a wall that only a few nights ago had peeled bloody with the flesh of the Catcher's human instruments. His heart skipped uncomfortably over the beat of silence.

"Is that why you started the channel?" he asked. "As a showcase?"

"Who amongst us doesn't want to share our exceptionality with a wider audience? I believe my cooking skills are above average, and I enjoy the music they produce. As do you, I think."

Will couldn't bring himself to confess how much he had enjoyed them: the whole body experience of that kitchen, like a thousand tiny silk wings fluttering just under his skin.

"Don't you have a gift you express to the world, Will?" The chef's voice was dropping in tone and register, and Will's body was full of silk wings again. "Something unique that you excel at?"

"My work—" Will stopped himself and weighed up his reply. "It'd be more accurate to say that my gift is expressed out of me. For me."

"Your work expresses your gift out of you, and then sends you home with its toll."

Lulled a moment earlier, Will's heartbeat picked up. He half-expected his wall and ceiling to bleed again.

"How— how do you know?" he whispered.

"Your urgent plea came in the middle of the day. Something in your work life must have triggered a stress response severe enough to send you running to me. Am I correct?"

Will swallowed, hard and dry. A spark of nightmare fear shocked his chest for a second and then was gone. "Yeah. Yes, you are."

"Are you at liberty to tell me what brought it on?"

Even if he was, Will couldn't bring himself to say it.

"Why are you doing this?" he asked instead.

"I told you: I'm sharing my gift."

"No, I mean: me. This isn't showcasing the music of your kitchen. Why do you want to help me? Or whatever this is."

There was a moment of thought from the other end. "The same reason I share my cooking with the world: self-expression, albeit more focused."

"Your self-expression is charity? Or is your charity self-expression?"

There was a kind of low, pleased rumble from the other hand, and Will nearly shivered with pleasure in the warm swaddle of blankets.

"I'll admit to an element of vanity in either case," the voice replied.

Will smiled into his pillow. He was starting to relax and drift again, his mind rocking gently to the measured voice. The Catcher case, which had crept along his walls, was in retreat.

"Okay. Tell me how," he said.

"There is nothing more you can tell me about what's troubling you?"

Will breathed quietly into the silence that followed the question. "I can't," he said. "I'm sorry."

"Very well. In that case, we'll return to our beginnings: the Compendium. I thought I would read to you from it. The Polish language is rich in sibilant fricatives. They should work nicely on your auto-meridian response. And I think you'll take comfort in listening to a language you're unable to understand. It comes with no obligations."

Will grinned slightly. "Now you're assuming again. Who says I'm not fluent in 17th century Polish?"

"If I'm not, then you're certainly not."

 _Vanity again_ , Will thought. "I need to brush my teeth first," he said. "Will you wait?"

"Of course."

Will did, and was quickly back in bed, huddled under the warm covers. He didn't believe his nightmares wouldn't soak through them later, but it was worth the momentary sense of complete safety to keep himself wrapped up.

"I will keep my voice like this. Will that suit?"

It would suit very well. Will murmured his agreement, every inch of his skin dancing to the low whisper in his ear. His eyes were falling closed.

The recitation began. The strange words seemed to rustle and shimmer, like a stream over rough stone that poured itself over Will's body, collected it and took it far away from the forests filled with Catcher's screams. He felt nearly weightless, adrift and teetering just on the horizon of wakefulness.

He mumbled a thank you. He remembered a brief pause of reply, then the soft rumble of words resumed. Will didn't need to understand them, didn't want to — the frequency they travelled on soon swept him over into a soft black nothing.

\---

He woke sharply, startled by the solidity of his sleep.

He fought off the covers and planted his feet on the cold floor. He looked warily to the side: his phone sat still pressed into the pillow where he'd fallen asleep on it. Not a dream then. Not that Will's dreams were like last night anyway. His sheets and pillow were dry.

He grabbed the phone and checked the Skype call log: seventy five minutes. That's how long he'd let this weirdest of therapy sessions go on for, most of it while he was already asleep.

And it had been therapy, hadn't it? He'd even volunteered for it. He didn't want to think about the ease with which he'd let himself sink into it. But the vivid memory of that voice still followed him into the shower: _I cooked it for you._

The jet hit his back, a steady wide patter of warmth that made him think of the way his body had responded to the mystery chef's cooking and then to that soothing voice. He closed his eyes against the stream and let the sound of the water carry him back.

Between the broken sleep and the even more broken dreams, Will had barely jerked off in weeks. But here, with the unexpected blessing and alertness of a whole night's sleep, he found himself reaching for his cock. He found it hard and ready, not the reluctant half-erection he'd normally give up on in minutes. He turned to face the stream and started to stroke.

It felt so good. He tried to empty his head and fill it with the fizz of running water and the pleasure of his hand, but he knew it was no use. There was only one thing on his mind as he worked himself faster.

The odd charity of the chef's voice had come out of Internet's ether and took care of Will. It gave him what he asked for. It had soothed him to sleep. Will's cock was a hot, heavy weight filling the tight tunnel of his fist.

He tipped his face up to the water and worked himself roughly, quickly, as if this momentary reprieve of normality could dissolve and slip down the drain. He heard himself above the water, crying out as he came. His needed his free hand to steady himself against the tiles and minutes to make sure his knees hadn't turned to liquid.

Back in bed, traces of last night's conversation still lingered as he opened up his laptop and pulled up the notes from the Catcher's file. The last thing he wanted to do was to listen to those screams again, but he wanted to make the most of a clear and rested head while he could.

He pulled up the victims' profiles and started reading. Within minutes, he was distracted again.

What was it the chef had said?

_The wish to express our exceptionality._

Will shut the laptop and stared up at his ceiling. No flayed flesh hanging from up above. He picked up the phone and dialled Jack. He didn't have much, but maybe it was enough.

"Will. I was about to call you."

"You asked me if the Catcher's finished," Will said.

"I did. Is he?"

"He can't finish yet. This was a delicate venture for him. An exploration of his own capabilities. We had his first masterpiece taken down, so it won't have gotten the reaction he wanted or thought he deserved. He'll need to widen his range. Try a new composition."

"Okay. None of that helps me find him."

Will frowned. "I know."

Something else from last night's conversation drifted back to him, and cleared the design assembling itself in his mind.

"Sorry. It's not a composition."

"What?"

"The Catcher's music — it's not an original composition. It's—" The chef's words again. "It's a well-chosen classic."

There was a pause on the other end.

"That's why I was about to call you. We got a consultant on the case, a musicologist. He analysed the Catcher's work. The cries are not a random track."

Will's heart lurched with a familiar spark of fear. He was up on his feet. A few strides and he was on his porch, away from the four walls and ceiling that would surely start to bleed again soon.

"Who? Tell me."

"Like you said: it's a well-chosen classic. It's Chopin." 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I'd let Mads read me a historical cookbook in a foreign language. Wouldn't you?


	4. Acoustics

Gripping the armrests of the chair Jack had put him in, Dunt the musicologist looked as if he'd shrunk inside his own skin. 

Having listened to parts of the scream prelude twice again that morning, Will felt the way the man looked. 

Dunt was explaining to Will what he'd already explained to Jack: how the Catcher's composition had been recognised for what it was. 

"He broadened the tempo, but tried to keep the pitch the same. The uh, the heartbeat track was the easiest to identify. It copies exactly the pattern of rain-like patter in the original." Dunt paused. Will saw him trying to make sense of the whole nightmarish task that had been put before him. "Chopin wouldn’t say that his music imitated raindrops. But this man certainly imitated Chopin."

"Don't think he'd agree with that assessment," Will said. 

"He’s not paying homage then?” Jack asked.

"This isn’t imitation. He may be practicing his craft, but he’s still aiming for invention. For transcendence." Will looked to the musicologist. "The piece. Is it any good? Is _he_?"

The man stared at Will and then at Jack, bewildered or maybe aghast. From the corner of his eye, Will saw Jack scowl. 

"I mean technically," Will said. 

“He knew what he was doing, yes. The piece is thoughtfully arranged and the way he used his uh, his source material—“ The man swallowed. “Even the dynamic range is similar to what you'd expect to hear in a competent performance. In its own way, his efforts are impressive." Dunt looked as if he wanted to scrub the last word from his mouth with soap. 

And who, Will wondered, was meant to be impressed? 

\---

He stared at his laptop. He had notes to write up before that afternoon's lecture, but the words on screen bled into tiny black ribbons and twisted themselves into something like sheet music. 

Two kinds of music collided in his head and created discord. All Will wanted was for the Catcher's composition to be expelled by the vivid memory of the stranger's voice. 

He wanted more than that. He'd been hoping for a message. Maybe even a voicemail, to see him through the day. But lunchtime came and went, and Will’s phone stayed silent. And in any case, he’d been forcing himself not to check it. 

By the time he was setting up for class, he couldn't hold back any longer. He fished out his phone, swiped through his notifications. Nothing, either from YouTube or Skype. A fog of forlorn feeling began to creep into his chest but really, what had he expected? 

Students filed into the room. Will looked up and saw Crawford trailing in behind them. His face looked heavy and grim, and Will knew he wouldn't be lecturing that day.

\---

"You'd not seen one of his before, have you?" Beverly asked. They'd not said much else to each other on the drive over. 

Will stared out of the back of Jack's car and watched land give itself up to the waters of the bay. They were already running out of daylight. 

"Not in the flesh," Will said. "So to speak."

"It's something," she said quietly. "It's something else."

The lonely warehouse sat on a slab of concrete like an enormous salt-rusted tobacco tin, one of the only buildings raised up on Oriole Island. A flock of terns rose up lazily from the lot as their car pulled up to the entrance, where Price and Zeller were already waiting. 

They went inside. At the far end of the floor, where the floodlights had been set up, Will saw two heaps. One of them was human-shaped, just barely. 

"Listen to this, Graham," Zeller said. He called out, and his voice rose up, clear and pure and amplified in the soaring interior. "Great acoustics, right?"

Of course they were, Will thought. He moved mechanically towards the floodlights. 

The woman lay crumpled on the old linoleum floor, face shrouded by a mop of thick blond hair. Swathes of her skin still clung in places to her red limbs and torso, as if she'd been given fins. The rest of her flesh had been thrown onto a pile nearby, together with her clothes. 

There was no display here, not like with the Ripper. There was no need. The Catcher's art lay elsewhere, on the recording equipment of which he'd left no trace.  

"He never cleans up after himself, does he?” Beverly said, following close behind Will. “He gets what he needs and just... vanishes."

"It's a considered act, the flailing," Will said. He kept his voice very low: he didn't want it to soar like Zeller's had. "It's not screams of pain and fear he wants to elicit. He’s after something more visceral. He aims for the purity of horror." 

"He'd set up a space heater for her. What's that all about?" Beverly said. "Why would you do that if you're about to skin someone alive?" She pointed to Price. "And then there's that."

Price held up the evidence bag to show Will. The water bottle inside had been half emptied. Will could see dark lipstick around the rim.

"It's almost certainly hers," Price said. "Looks like he tried to make her drink."

Will's throat went dry. He looked up and around, and wondered if the echoes of the woman's screams still lingered in the sprawl of the warehouse, impressed into its walls and windows and ceiling forever. He thought of their own voices, mingled somewhere with what had remained of hers. 

Oh, how she must have sang for the man who took her skin and then her life. 

"She wasn't like the others," Will said. "She was special. A great instrument needs great care." 

\---

They dropped him off in the Quantico parking lot. Beverly got out of the car and wrapped him in a quick hug. Either she needed the contact or Will looked like he did.

He drove, ostensibly back to Wolf Trap. The warehouse discovery cut at his brain, sliced it up into slivers. He knew the real aftermath was still coming, waiting for him in the quiet of his home. 

More than ever he wanted something else to greet him instead: the hiss of wine and the sizzle of oil in an iron pan, the stranger's voice, all soft murmurs and alien tongue, all dancing under his skin and soothing him again to sleep. 

But still his phone had stayed silent. Maybe the aural therapy session had been a one-off experiment, and Will had been tried on for size and discarded. 

Fuck it. He'd message the man himself. It wasn't like him, but he had to at least know. What did it matter? If he was no longer wanted, he could put the whole thing to one side for good, even if it meant more nightmares. 

He turned the car around and drove back into Baltimore. There was something he needed first.

If he was to continue as the subject of the chef's curious brand of charity, he had to affirm his commitment. And if he never heard from the man again, he could at least lose himself again in the music of Compendium Ferculorum's cooking videos.

Will had been past the shop with the fanciful name a few times, but had never gone in. He'd never had cause, until now. 

The interior of Euphonic Oasis was as sparse and understated as the exterior. Will was the only customer, and no one emerged to greet him.

Black and brushed silver boxes studded with buttons and dials sat locked away in illuminated glass display cases. Somewhere inside the store some of the same boxes had been connected to speakers that probably cost more than Will's monthly salary. The speakers were playing something soft and strange, something Will couldn't adequately label as either jazz or classical music. 

On the opposite wall, also encased in glass, hung headphones with brand names Will had barely heard of: Grado, Audeze, Bang & Olufsen. He looked around for price tags and found them in a glossy black brochure on the store's counter. He squinted to make sure his eyes didn’t deceive him and winced. 

He'd been spotted: a man appeared from the back, short, bespectacled, with a cap of slick black hair. His shirt collar and tie knot jutted neatly out of the neck of a burgundy sweater. Something about his tidiness told Will Euphonic Oasis was his store. 

The man poised his fingers on the lectern-like counter and eyed Will with a bland and pleasant smile. "Can I help you?" 

"Yeah. I'm looking for headphones." 

"Of course. Any type or brand in particular?"

Which set, Will wanted to know, would best infuse his skin with the brassy bass and satiny lisp of the stranger's voice, with the clack and scrape of his knife? Which would help him shut out his nightmares?

"Don't really know. Something decent that won’t cost me a whole pay check?”

“And what, if I may ask, will you primarily be listening to?”

Will opened his mouth. Did the man mean musical genres? Radio, podcasts? And what business was it of his anyway?

“Uh. Usual stuff,” he said, then blurted out: “YouTube, I guess.”

The man’s smile fell somewhat at that, but he nodded and dutifully made his way to one of the cases. He retrieved a pair of over-ear headphones, not too bulky, with a headband of leather and stainless steel that Will immediately liked the look of.

“Sennheiser. A sturdy mid-range model with excellent noise cancellation. 20 hours of battery life." Will reached to examine the headphones, but the man didn't seem willing to hand them over. "I have just the thing for you to test drive them with," he said quickly. 

"Can I try them with my phone instead?" Will asked. "Sorry."

The man’s smile seemed to dissolve further, but he handed over the necessary adapter for Will's now slightly ancient phone and stood back while Will plugged the headphones in and put them on. 

Will opened the YouTube app and found the Compendium's osso bucco video. Nothing new had been uploaded to the channel that evening. 

He pressed play. The shimmering melody of the chef's kitchen ran over him like summer rain.  

For a moment, he let himself close his eyes. When he opened them again, it was in time to see a small rectangle slide down from the top of his screen, headlined with a Skype username Will recognised immediately.  

Will's heart vaulted in his chest. He pulled the headphones from his head, nearly dropped them yanking them free from his phone. In his periphery, he saw the store owner's mortified expression. 

“Just— could you wrap these up for me?" he said to the man. "Thanks, I won't be a minute."

He retreated into the corner of the store and fumbled around for the message. 

 _"Easier day at work today?"_ it asked.

Will wanted to give himself a minute to reply, but his fingers were rushing ahead of him. 

 _"I wish it had been,"_ his hand typed and hit send.

Will added:

" _It was cacophonous and draining."_

_"That is regrettable. I hope you at least slept well last night?"_

Sleep. God, those blissful hours of nothingness felt like a lifetime ago. But he _had_ slept well, and the morning after... The memory of what he'd done in the shower came back to him and warmed him in seconds. 

He wanted to reply with something that would express the measure of his gratitude without betraying what that evening and morning had meant to him. 

_"Really well. Thanks to your efforts."_

_"Think nothing of it. It took you some time to drift off. The recipe for stewed hazel grouse seemed to finally do the trick."_

_"How could you tell?"_

_"The tell-tale tempo of your breath."_

Will felt beyond warm then. The covetous feeling crept over him again, the feeling of possessing something, if not quite illicit, then intensely private. He glanced back at the store owner. The man stood behind the counter holding the glossy bag containing Will's soon-to-be purchase, looking uncertain and ill at ease.  

 _"Give me a minute,"_   he texted the chef.

He paid the slightly obscene amount for his headphones, though with fewer second thoughts or regrets now than he might have had before. He muttered his thanks and received another combination of courtly nod and plastered smile in farewell. 

"Happy listening," the man said to Will's back. 

In the car, Will put the bag on the passenger seat and took out his phone again. 

_"Guessing it's not hazel grouse you're making tonight? Kinda hard to find at Whole Foods."_

_"As it happens, I haven't started dinner yet."_

Will licked then bit at his lower lip. 

 _"Your online audience will be left waiting,"_ he typed.

_"Tonight I would prefer an audience of one. Would you like to suggest a dish?"_

Will stared at the screen and listened to the rise and fall of his own breath, to the hum of the sparse late night traffic outside and to the rain just starting to tap against his windshield.

_"You don't have to do this."_

_"Not even for the sake of self-expression or charity?"_

_"I don't want to impose,"_ Will said, but he was only wasting data. Of course he'd accept. He'd been waiting for this all day and now here it was, offered to him like a Christmas gift. 

 _"I would never propose this if my offer wasn't sincere,"_ came the reply. 

_"Okay. Something simple then. Something comforting."_

_"I have just the thing. Call me when you're ready."_

_"Just like that?"_

_"Does it need to be any more complicated than that, Will?"_

Not complicated, not that. But it still felt like Will was capitulating to the strange shape his desires seemed to have assumed. This wasn't normal, and by extension neither was Will. 

 _"I'm out. Be home in about an hour,"_ he texted, and started the car. 

Rain picked up on the way. Only once or twice did Will hear in its patter the heartbeat of the Catcher's reimagined prelude, mixing with his own.

Only once or twice did he see in the passing streetlight the ghostly red heap of the woman who'd been discarded on Oriole Island having yielded up her voice for the sake of new art. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know shit about music, but I do love Chopin. There are countless ways to imagine his prelude Op 28 No. 15
> 
> Pogorelich (slow - the Catcher's version was much slower):  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWJMrNx62v8
> 
> Rubinstein (fast!):  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GG9Hsc3rJYA
> 
> Ashkenazy (tender and flowy)  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCAybXN5ojA
> 
> Horowitz (best "raindrop" interpretation, IMHO)  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_6APTb3RNQ


	5. Thunderstorm in Majorca

A bloated silence sat waiting him at home, broken only by the snuffling of canine noses and the welcoming clatter of claws that probably needed a trim. Even the rain had stopped. 

Crossing the threshold, Will felt a sense of approaching panic. His walls, like his thoughts, threatened to bleed again. If he didn't fill the silence with the chef's music, it would soon be filled with the Catcher's.

He stood in the kitchen, stared down into the glossy black bag that contained his purchase — and suddenly felt idiotic. 

He hadn't asked if he was supposed to call the chef, or the other way around. 

As if to break the impasse, his pocket rang loudly and made him jump. 

He tucked the phone between his ear and shoulder, and scrambled to unwrap his shiny new headphones. 

"Hi."

"Will. Have you eaten?" 

That voice, already so familiar, cushioned deep in his skull. And it had only been days.

"I— No, not yet." 

"The sounds of my kitchen may benefit your well-being, but you cannot expect them to also fill your belly."

"No, but I might get to find out if a growling stomach triggers my ASMR.”

A rumble of a laugh followed, and that _was_ a trigger: it slid under Will’s skin like a soft avalanche of sound and made his toes curl inside his boots.  

"Relaxing to the echoes of one's own hunger pangs would be a novel approach to self-care. Eat, Will. Get comfortable. And call me when you're ready." 

They hung up, and Will stared at the rectangular void of his phone screen. 

"What is this thing?" he asked himself. "What the fuck am I doing?" 

He wolfed down some soup and toast, as ordered. He settled in an armchair, feet up, glass of rye in hand, dogs flopped around his feet. His heart, meanwhile, had settled a fraction too high in his chest. 

Putting on his new headphones, he thought of the old set he got a decade ago from K-Mart and wondered if he'd ever before bought a replacement for something that wasn't broken. He thought about all the work-related research he needed to do that evening and was about to shove aside.

None of this was like him. He started the call. 

Two rings, then Will heard music, reminiscent of the one in the chef’s first video. Somewhere in the background, a woman's operatic voice was advancing a graceful and somber melody. No sounds of cooking yet, though there were footsteps, the soft rustle of cloth, the shimmer of pouring water. 

"Good evening again."

"Hi. I still don't know your name," Will said. 

"And I'm still convinced you have the advantage of familiarity," the voice on the other end said. "A great number of things you could learn about me remain far more intimate than my name. Go ahead. Ask."

That word, _intimate_ , poured itself out of the chef's mouth and through the expensive tech wrapped about Will's head. He shivered. That voice was like brushing bare skin against fine fabric. 

The man was right — Will didn't need a name. There _were_ a million other things he could and wanted to ask. But against the back of his skull sat the pressure of his day, the musical revelation of that morning, and a profile of a killer he had barely started to give shape to. 

The somber melody sailed over the ensuing moment of silence. 

"Not sure how intimate this is but," Will said at last. "That tune in the background. D'you know much about classical music?"  

"More than most. I'm hardly a scholar, but I do know what affects me. I think you do as well." For a moment, the music grew louder — Will thought the chef must have put him closer to its source. "What do you think of this piece?"

The song lingered over a single drawn-out tone, suddenly and deeply mournful. Will closed his eyes. He wanted to say he preferred the sound of the chef's voice; wanted the music to transport him to a kitchen where those expert hands reigned supreme. 

Instead, he saw the inside of the warehouse on Oriole Island. The flayed limbs and mop of blond hair lay crumpled inside it, as if abandoned on a grand stage. Somewhere in that poor torn up body sat the silenced voice box that had sung for the Catcher.   
   
“I don't know," Will said quietly. "I guess it’s beautiful."  
   
“And?"

"And— and nothing. Did you want a critique?"

"I'm merely curious to know if it affects you."

"I don't understand what she's singing about. Whatever I feel won't be— won't be accurate if I don't know the meaning and intent behind the music."

"In life, understanding almost never precedes feeling. Do your emotional impressions often deceive you? Or is it your work that demands clinical knowledge over intuition?"

No, Will thought. It didn't work like that. Knowing was the end goal, but when it came to his killers, feeling and understanding for him danced to the same tune. He rarely doubted himself. But here, wrapped up in the brass and velvet of that nameless voice, Will was full of soft self-doubt. 

"If I ask what you're cooking tonight, will that be enough to distract us from talking about my work?"

"Certainly. You are my audience, and I’m at your command.” 

That sense of secret access and possession warmed Will through again. He flushed it down with a gulp of his drink. The chef could have broadcast his sonically sumptuous supper to thousands, millions — but he’d chosen Will. 

Metal sounds arrived from the other end of, Will guessed, a pot being set on a range and a knife being drawn from a block. "I thought: a tartiflette,” the chef said. “A hearty classic of the Haute-Savoie, ideal for the cold drizzly night we're having here."

"Sounds like you're having what we're having. What's in the dish?"

"Since I'm depriving you tonight of the visual aspects of my cooking, I thought you may wish to guess."

Will had to laugh. “Even if I could, doesn't mean I'll be able to see what you're making. Might as well be feeling an elephant. Parts don't make a whole.”

“If it helps to further your insights, you may also listen to me eat it later, though I don't think that's the auditory experience you signed up for. Now, tell me if you can deduce each of the ingredients I’ll be preparing.”

“So much for being a passive audience.”

“I never said I wanted you passive,” that voice mumured into Will’s ear, so low that he had to take another drink.

“And if I can’t guess?”

The background music was suddenly cut silent on a soaring note. 

“Then the failure will be mine for not having given you sufficient clues,” the chef said. “No pressure, Will. Enjoy the game.”

Will could try — no harm in it. He pressed the headphones over his ears and almost held his breath as he listened to what ensued. 

The chop and clack of a knife coming down, crisp, crunching, fast. The nerves beneath Will's skin, already warmed by the timbres of the chef’s voice, lit up and danced like little flames. With eyes still closed, at long last he was back in that kitchen, with its baroque colours, pristine white aprons and light gleaming off blades. 

"Whatever it is, you're preparing a small mountain of it,” Will whispered. The chef didn’t reply or pause in his task. “You do this a lot. You’re an expert at it. But you want it over with quickly, that’s why you started with it. It's not your favourite thing to do. It's not challenging. It's a chore." Will paused for effect, though he was almost certain of his answer. A discreet sniffle from the chef confirmed it. “Onions. You’re chopping onions.”

There was a pause from the other end, then Will's skin felt a pleasant scrape of steel against wood and the sizzle of something sliding into hot oil. 

"Very good, Will,” the chef murmured. “Ears are not an organ of seeing, yet just now you saw as much as you heard. Shall we continue?”

A slab of something slapped a kitchen surface. The knife picked up again: just as rhythmic but softer and more careful now, sawing more than cutting. The slower music of the blade relaxed Will, but the guessing game kept him alert. A curious pleasure crept into it, too: the pleasure of using his odd set off gifts on something so innocent. Not murder for once, but someone's dinner. 

“You’re handling this one differently," he said. "It's heavier, thicker. You're savoring cutting into this one. It's more precious, hard-won. It's— it's meat.” 

A small sound of approval from the chef's throat deepened the ripples of delicate pleasure already washing over Will's body. "Bravo. I salt-cured and smoked the bacon myself. It was sourced from a rare and expensive animal, but well worth the price and effort. It is now diced and will join the onions. Shall we see if you can continue your streak?"

Will laughed again. "I have a feeling it's about to get harder." 

It did. The knife slid through the next ingredient in a long, soft swoop, then clacked against wood. Will heard the same twice more, then it was over. 

"Well?" the chef asked.

"No idea. Sorry." 

"A wheel of Reblochon, a rind-washed cheese made to cover the other ingredients and melt over them. It's made with unpasteurised milk, so it isn't exactly available for purchase in my region. But I have my connections."

Will found he was still smiling. The grimmest aspects of his day seemed very far away. "Rare pigs. Illegal cheese connections. How does one obtain those?" 

"Given the nature of my hobby, by cunning and necessity. Now, the onions and bacon will need to sauté for a while, and the dish also requires potatoes which will take some minutes to boil. How shall we pass the time?"  
   
For a moment, Will let himself bathe in the subdued sounds of cooking that lingered in the background: the distant soft bubble of the potato pot, the measured sizzle of the meat and the onions. He felt slack-limbed and curiously cozy, as if his stomach was already full of the chef's hearty supper. A question drifted into his head, a loose end he'd left hanging. 

"You said something earlier. You said I know what affects me." 

"I did. And you must. My YouTube channel was new and not the easiest to find, yet your choice to select it was as deliberate as it was instinctual.”

"Your channel’s thumbnail was the only one that didn't show teenagers crunching on onion rings."

"There's no shame in judging a book by its cover." From the other end came a scrape and a hiss: the onions must have been given a stir. "You are also particular about how you experience our sessions."

Will squirmed in his chair at that, fingers digging into the armrests. "Am I?" 

“Your voice sounds a bit more distant tonight,” the chef said. “If I’m not mistaken you are on speaker phone.” There was a pause, and Will’s heart skipped a beat. “Are you wearing headphones, Will?”

The several hundred dollars of audio tech wrapper around Will's head suddenly made his ears burn. He didn’t have to volunteer a truthful answer. But he would. No turning back: he'd reveal his commitment to this, whatever it was.

“Yeah. Yeah, I bought some earlier.”

A small sound of something like approval arrived in response. "May I ask what brand?"

Will told him. "The guy at the Oasis— uh, the shop I bought them in said they were decent."

There was a brief pause. "Then we must put them to good use," the chef said. "The bacon and onions are nearly ready and I must assemble my dish for the oven. Afterwards, shall we decide how to spend the rest of our evening?" 

"Yeah," Will said, and felt the sudden strain on his voice. "I'll wait." 

The chef fell silent and the music of the kitchen picked up anew, a bit more distant now. Will's eyes came open. Had he really kept them closed this whole time? His world came back into brutal relief and with it, all the tensions of his day. The haven around his ears was an island in an ocean of creeping silence. The mollifying pleasures of the chef's music were dissipating fast. 

"There," the voice resurfaced and Will's heart skipped with relief. "The tariflette has gone to its fate. We have just over half an hour before it's ready. Now seems like a good opportunity to ask if you're enjoying yourself so far."

The burn in Will's ears spread far and wide. "I— before I answer, can I ask another question? This one’s more intimate.”

“I’ll do my best to reply.”

“Do you get ASMR?”

Over the brief pause that followed, Will heard the sound of cabinets and drawers closing. “No,” the chef said. “It interests me, but it does not affect me.”

A forlorn feeling squeezed at Will’s heart. The man whose cooking and voice played on every nerve in Will’s body like a theremin would never understand how they made Will feel.

"But music affects you," Will whispered, with a strange sort of hope. "Some music."

"Some does, yes. And what music affects you, Will?"

"Chopin," Will heard himself say, eyes staring across the room at his work bag. "Chopin affects me."

"The tragic consumptive. Any of his works in particular?”

"Yeah." Will quickly pinched his eyes shut again. "The 'Raindrop' prelude."

There was silence from the other end — the first true silence of their whole exchange. "A well-loved piece, and with good reason. Do you know the story of its creation?"

Will didn't. That was supposed to have been research for tonight. He'd neglected that along with everything else for the sake of losing himself in that voice. 

"Tell me."

"Our sickly Frédéric had been recuperating in Majorca with his lover, George Sand," the chef said. "She'd gone out in a heavy thunderstorm with her son, leaving her feverish paramour in the monastery that was their home. Frédéric listened to the rain battering their roof and imagined his love had perished in the storm."  

"Did she come back?" Will asked with barely any breath in his lungs. 

"She did, and wrote extensively about the episode in her memoirs."

"The memoirs," Will whispered. "Do you have them?"

"Shall I read to you from them? Read to you about the storm?"

Will didn't even have to ask. Through his headphones, footsteps were already advancing, ascending stairs. Will's mind trailed behind them, following in the darkness. 

A book was drawn from a shelf. The pages turned slowly, crisply, deliberately. Will felt as if someone were turning them beneath his skin. His breathing calmed. He waited for the words to come. He was starting to drift again, still in the dark. This time, he wouldn't let himself open his eyes and break the spell.

"It won't be a translation, will it?" he muttered. "Another language I can't understand?" His French had been leaving him fast since his New Orleans days. 

"A foreign tongue worked beautifully in the previous instance," the voice replied, warm and cool all at once. "I can still recall the pattern of your breathing as you drifted off to sleep."

Will might have smiled. That voice. That nameless voice. It began its recitation in melodic and half-whispered French that slid under Will's skin and swirled somewhere in the pit of his belly, cool and warm all at once. Will's hand followed down and rested on his stomach to feel the place where the voice had settled. He wanted to slide it lower. His body would comply. Not tonight. Not like this. His breath might give him away.

"Why a prelude?" Will mumbled quietly to himself. "What does it begin?"

"Hm?"

"Nothing— nothing. Don't stop. Keep reading. Please. It's very beautiful."

"Will?" 

"Mm?"

"Buy new headphones. The ones you were sold are adequate, but I can recommend a better brand for our purposes. I'll message you the details.“

Will murmured his agreement. After all, why not? He was in deep and far now, drifting through the darkness, and the shore that held flayed bodies and preludes made of screams looked very far away. 

The chef read on. And on. Only the words remained, and Will followed their somnolent shadows into slumber, understanding but a few but feeling each and every one. 


	6. Rain on Oriole Island

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I found this chapter a bit tricky to write, so I apologise for any grammatical shortcomings or typos.

The downpour that swallowed the hills hissed like hot oil in a thousand iron pans. Above it, Will could still hear the sound of the fortepiano, the far and faint trickle of its notes summoning him through the storm, towards the monastery. 

His bare feet slipped on the stones of the steep, winding path. Raindrops pricked icy against his neck, as if they meant to dissolve him. The path seemed interminable — until it wasn’t. Will found himself in the courtyard at the heart of the ruin. The monastery's roofs had long gone. There was nowhere to shelter.

The storm had turned the courtyard into a reflecting pool and there, mirrored in its centre, stood the source of the music, a gushing well of beautiful sound. 

Rain poured over the lacquered surfaces of the instrument. Rain soaked the hair and coat of the man who sat before it. His back to Will, the man played with consummate and thrilling skill.

Will shivered all over. He drew closer, feet taking wide splashing strides through the flood. The music was alien but oh so sweet. It affected him. It touched his skin in a way the rain never could. 

He wanted to touch the music in return, and so he touched the man, hand warming on the soaked stranger's shoulder. He peered over to watch the music being made and saw hands that were familiar.

"Are you him?" Will said, and didn't know who he meant.

In reply, the hands struck a darker chord. 

The air no longer smelled of petrichor and pine, but of copper. Drop by drop, the rain began to turn red. It splashed against the ivory, over dextrous fingers that played on despite. 

 _The sky is bleeding_ , Will wanted to say, had to say to the man. He tugged on a shoulder, but still the man played on, even as his hands drowned in blood. 

Fear shook Will to his very core. He peered about wildly, looking for answers or help.  

And that's when he saw her: stood still in the wreckage at the far end of the courtyard, red against a backdrop of green sodden hills. The woman, small, blonde and flayed. 

The stranger’s notes soared above the storm. The woman's arms rose up in time to the music and thrust forward,  towards Will. Her mouth gaped wide and moved, but no sound came out. 

\---

The dream spat him out onto the cold shore of morning. For a moment he flailed and gasped, trying to remember the purpose of his lungs. 

Dawn had only just risen. By degrees Will pried himself out from the chair he had slept in. He made coffee, let the dogs out onto the porch and watched them spill out over fields soggy from the rain that must have returned overnight. His body felt creaky and stiff. His ears hurt from being pressed by the headphones all night. 

Still in yesterday's clothes, he settled into bed and tried to ease himself into the day. He made a start on the things he'd neglected the night before. He skimmed through the lab's initial report from Oriole Island. He read about Chopin's stay in Majorca. He Googled tartiflettes. He checked Compendium Ferculorum's YouTube channel. 

It was no use. He was distracted, hazy. The dream had blurred the Catcher case with last night's auditory pleasures. Nothing in Will’s head was siloed anymore. 

Three hours until class. He'd shower, prep his notes, set out into the world. He could do this.

His phone trilled softly against his bedsheets and Will nearly spilled his coffee. He snatched at the phone with a quick intake of breath. The chef.

_"Good morning, Will. I hope you slept well. The headphone recommendation, as promised.”_

The link that arrived with the message took Will to a handsome set of headphones even more expensive than the ones he had bought. He still wanted them. Not just because they held the promise of more and richer sessions with the chef. He wanted them because he was told to buy them. 

He started to text back then made himself stop. Maybe the man didn't expect or want a reply. The two of them seemed to be in a similar time zone, and it was early. Time for getting ready for work, not for chatting with Internet strangers. 

But who knew when Will might have another chance to get his fix? Except for the implication held by the headphones, neither of them had hinted at keeping this thing going. 

 _"Thanks,"_ he typed. _"I'll try and get them tonight"_

He paused for a moment, then added:

_"Sorry for falling asleep on you again, kinda rude”_

He hit send and held his breath. Before he had to catch the next one, a new message arrived. 

_"If I had objected, I’m sure I would have found a way to rouse you. ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ at full volume perhaps."_

A smile pulled at the corners of Will’s mouth. He wondered if the chef had listened to him breathing again whilst he slept. He felt warm despite the morning chill. 

_"That’s one idea"_

_"I do have something else to share with you."_

_“Do you? I’m not sure I can afford any more audio equipment”_

Another link slid up in reply, this one pointing to a private file server. Will blinked at the screen. Before he could ask, an explanation appeared.

_“I recorded my recitation of Sand last night. Only my voice, not our conversation. As I won't be available for the next few evenings, I thought you might enjoy having it to hand, should the need strike.”_

Even as he read the words on screen, Will felt himself being stricken with a singular need, a heady concoction of gratitude, possession and embarrassment, and of other things he couldn’t name. 

_“I don’t know what to say”_

_“But you don’t object to the gift?”_

_“No"_

_"If you'd like, I can point you at a good translation of the passage I read you."_

_"It's okay. I picked up the odd word and phrase last night, but it was like you said”_

_"What did I say?"_

_"I think I like not understanding"_

It was an oddly vulnerable confession, something close to admitting that he liked being lied to. Will pushed his work laptop aside and slumped back against his pillow, phone held up and over his face. He wished they could have had this as an actual conversation, but then he could almost hear the chef's voice in each text. 

_"Last night, you felt the need to understand the music I played for you. Not so with the reading?"_

_"Sometimes it’s a relief, not having to understand. To just feel."_

_"It was Auden who said that the best way to experience mass is in another language."_

_"Is that what you're really doing when you're reading to me? Sermonising?"_

_"What I offer you may be considered therapy. And the first therapists were clergymen."_

_"So you're trying to save my soul. And here I thought you were just enjoying showing off your exceptionality”_

_"What I most reliably enjoy is indulging your needs and wants, from genuine distress to mere curiosity."_

Will had to put the phone down at that. He stared at the ceiling, listening to the rush of blood in his veins. 

That was the gist of it, wasn't it? The very source of the covetous feeling that had followed him around for days. Will had been soothed and indulged. Intrigued and pleasantly surprised. A whole menu of things he hadn't had for years, and never in such abundance, had been served up to him on a silver platter and he'd dug into the feast with greedy ears.  

He picked up the phone again and typed quickly. 

_"I hope you know I'm grateful"_

_"Are you?"_

_"Not just for the recording, for everything. I feel like I’m taking too much from you"_

_"You've not taken any more than I have allowed. But if you'd like to reciprocate, there is one thing you can do for me."_

Will's fingers twitched against the screen. A million possibilities teemed suddenly in his brain, only some of them filthy. He took a slow breath. The heat he'd felt last night low in his belly lit itself up anew. 

_"Tell me."_

_"As I told you, I don't experience ASMR. The next time we speak, will you describe it for me? I’d like to know what your body feels when you listen to me.”_

\--- 

If he was to oblige the chef's request, the recording would come in handy. Will could listen to the recitation and take detailed, anthropological notes on his responses. He could arrange these into a kind of profile on himself — or at least on his hyper-sensitive senses. 

Maybe he'd do it tonight, the case permitting. 

Now. He could do it now. He still had time before work, and it wouldn't take long. 

He downloaded the file to his phone and went to fetch the headphones. He was about to crawl back into bed and under the duvet, when a thought possessed him with a sharp thrill. 

He peeled out of his sweater briskly, then his jeans, then everything else. He needed a shower soon anyway, didn't he? And he wanted to do this right. 

He stretched out on top of the sheets. Air blanketed his skin, a cool and invisible cloth. He slipped on the headphones, closed his eyes and pressed play. 

_I want to know what your body feels._

Will shivered. 

First the rustle of pages, firing off the first volley of tingling sensation. Then came the voice.

On his skin, it registered like a rapid patter of a thousand delicate fingertips. A mute melody was being played on the instrument of Will's nervous system. The alien tongue and the sound of steady breath streamed together in the darkness behind his eyes. He saw nothing, he only heard and felt, and was grateful for it. No skinned or screaming horrors had pursued him here, out of his life or dreams. 

He remembered how his hand had slid down to find the place on his belly where the resonance of the voice had pooled. He did it again now, pressing his palm below his navel, rubbing small circles there. He still couldn't bring himself to move it lower. To stroke himself would be an admission, a point of no return.

But under the voice-summoned waves of shimmering sensation, his body ached for touch. The warm and ordinary want he had felt that time in the shower was swallowing him up with every new phrase that poured into his ears. He was so desperately hard. He could smell himself.

He rolled over instead. The voice found the back of him and caressed over new planes of naked skin. His toes pinched the sheets. His cock felt hot and heavy, trapped under his weight. He’d make a mess like this, probably made one already. It didn't matter. He started to grind against the mattress, into the warming wet patch left there by his leaking cock.

"Will.”

Will's breath and hips stuttered to a stop. Had he really just heard that? Had it come from his phone or his head? He listened to the drawn-out silence suddenly wrapped around his ears. Not a complete silence: he heard a sigh being drawn slowly in. Then more words.

"I wonder if your skin still responds to my voice even when you sleep," the chef whispered to him.  

This must have been uttered when he’d already fallen asleep. Will smothered his face in a pillow and let it muffle something like a whine. Those words. Those words undid him. He felt lit up from within. Every inch of him shimmered with sensation. He rocked down hard against the sheets, but it wasn’t enough. Time for an admission. He thrust a hand between himself and the bed, gripped his cock and listened for more.

"Do you register the sound of it as something akin to a caress? The alchemy of voice turned touch?"

Then a pause, as for a reply. Then French again, with that voice like poured molten metal, like a knife scraped over stone. Or skin.

In Will's overheated mind, voice did become touch. He could almost see them, those elegant, skilled hands, traversing the shapes of his body. He felt them more than the cold morning air, more than the friction of sheets against his chest and thighs. Those hands, roaming him, prying him apart, going inside. Wrapping around him and getting him off. Soft and rough around his cock, insistent and tender, they tugged him to the edge. 

He smothered his cries and shook and shook as he came, the alchemy of that voice his only companion through the guilty giddiness and blinding pleasure of his climax. 

\---

He'd only just left class when his phone rang with an urgency that was all in his head — he knew that news about the case was bound to arrive sooner or later, and here it was. 

Whatever was coming down the line, he wanted to hear it some place quiet, without students elbowing past him in the hallway. Too far from the safety of his office, he slid into the men's room instead. 

He answered without looking at caller ID. 

"Hi." Beverly's voice. "We have ID on the latest victim." 

Will tried to ignore the twist in his stomach and stared down the long beige procession of restroom stall doors. The woman from his dream, draped in wild hair and red scraps of flesh, stood at the end and gasped her mute song. 

"Yeah. Go ahead."

"Adrianna Remini," Beverly said. "Visiting soprano at the Baltimore Concert Opera. She'd been driving down to a retreat in Annapolis and never made it." 

A moment of silence followed. Will pinched his eyes shut. When he opened them again, the woman was gone. 

"Guessing her profession doesn't come as a surprise?" Beverly said. 

A precious instrument, worthy of being kept warm, worthy of the soaring acoustics in the warehouse on Oriole Island. The Catcher had caught and skinned his first true songbird. 

Will dropped his forehead against a mirror and stared past himself, into nothing. 

"Not a surprise," he said quietly. "Got anything else?"

"We're looking for her car and tracking down known associates." Will heard the rustle of paperwork from the other end. He thought of the book pages that had turned for his ears' delight. "Will. The location where she was killed. Why was this one so different?" 

"I've been wondering the same thing."

"You said the Catcher might be using the places he kills them as— what was it?"

"An auditory canvas," Will said and a thought came to him, only an inkling, but as clear and sudden as the glimpse of the bloody woman moments ago. It made him faintly ill. 

"I've gotta go."

"Aren't you gonna come in? Jack will want you."

"The other victims. Check for any musical connections. Opera patronage, choir membership, that sort of thing."

"What about you? Where are you going?"

"Oriole Island." 

\---

Not an understanding, but a feeling. He had to follow it to its conclusion, whatever that was. But there was something else on the agenda first, something he'd promised himself. 

He parked outside the Euphonic Oasis. Clutching the bag with his unwanted purchase, he peered in through the windows. Normally he didn't mind returning stuff, but there was nothing wrong with the headphones. And he didn't think the store owner was the type to take rejection of a personal recommendation lightly. Especially since the man appeared to be having a not wholly amicable exchange with the store's sole customer, one dressed like he could actually afford to buy most things in there.

To hell with it — Will wanted his headphones. He walked in, nearly collided with the well-heeled shopper, and got his exchange.  

Back in the car, he reached into the bag which held the beautiful new piece of kit, matte black and chrome with smooth wood inlays over the earpieces. He thought about its ultimate purpose: the pursuit of a higher sensory experience. 

\---

A fiery sunset hung over the island. The warehouse sat silhouetted black against the sky, an enormous coffin, its rows of high windows burnished red. 

Will spotted no gawkers. Few would bother to make the trip out here, though that might change once the identity of the Catcher's songbird was revealed. If they did come, they'd find  nothing of note. Just a small industrial strip of land, home to concrete and metal and seabirds. 

Will parked near the local patrol cars. He flashed ID at the cop who'd rolled down his window, then ducked under the cordon and walked across the sprawl of the empty lot. 

He reached the shoreline. Terns and starlings were swooping above the water, spatters of black paint set in motion. Clouds were rolling in from the East. Though Will could tell they carried rain, they didn't leech any crimson from the sunset. For a moment Will was back in his dream, with all its unease. He wondered if the sky would soon bleed. 

"Why here?" he whispered. It wasn't, he knew, because of any practicalities of crime. 

It started to rain, barely a drizzle. Will put out his hand and watched the droplets come down, clear not crimson. He closed his eyes. 

_I came here before. Before I brought her. I've been and stood on this spot many times._

The rain picked up fast. Will heard it splash against water of the bay, the ground at his feet. An ordinary sort of sound. 

Behind him a larger sound was rising, soaring, broadening like applause. 

The roof of the warehouse. A million raindrops were colliding with an expanse of corrugated sheet metal and glass, and leaving their song in their wake. 

_The rain comes often. I listen to it. I feel it. I feel it on my skin, in my skin._

Will's heartbeat picked up. He turned and walked slowly towards the looming shape of the warehouse. Here it was: the feeling he'd pursued to its conclusion. 

He was shivering all over, cold and wet and sick with understanding, but his skin was awash with shimmering waves of sensation. The same sensation he knew from the sizzle of oil, from the rustle of turning pages, from the voice of a nameless chef. 

The man who flayed flesh to make art knew it too. 

**Author's Note:**

> Compendium Ferculorum (or "A Collection of Dishes") by chef Stanisław Czerniecki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compendium_ferculorum,_albo_Zebranie_potraw


End file.
